3 Introduction Many good things come out of contact centers, but reporting is generally not one of them. Given the large number of systems automatic call distributors (ACDs), interactive voice response (IVR), computer telephony integration (CTI), customer relationship management (CRM), response management, chat, dialing, recording, workforce management, quality assurance, surveying, speech analytics, just to mention a few each of which generates lots of reports, contact center managers and supervisors are often buried in data but eager for actionable insights. Contact centers need two primary categories of reports to deliver this information: 1. Real-time alerts and notifications that let managers (business or IT) know when there are issues that need immediate attention red-flag events that someone needs to take care of immediately 2. Historical performance and trending data that can be presented in the way the user wants to see it and that can be changed to meet evolving business needs As a result of recent innovations in analytics and dashboard technology, contact center leaders no longer have to struggle with reporting. There are now flexible real-time and historical reporting tools that can adapt to changing business needs. If your reporting systems are limited or not giving you critical and timely data and alerts, consider a thirdparty reporting solution that consolidates data from multiple operating systems and identifies the problem areas. These solutions go by many names, including reporting systems, contact center performance management (CCPM) or business intelligence (BI). They are characterized by their ease of use and ability to collect and deliver the appropriate data on a timely basis. Even better, when used properly, they pay for themselves by enabling managers to improve the performance of their departments DMG Consulting LLC

4 Contact Center Reporting Requirements Contact center and IT managers know what they want from reporting systems. At a high level, they want to be able to access and combine data from all of their operating systems, including the ACD, dialer, CTI, CRM, sales, retention, IVR, recording, QA, workforce management, speech analytics, and others, on a real-time and historical basis. This is not as easy as it seems, as data from different applications is not always easy to combine. Specifically, end users are looking for the ability to: 1. Collect and consolidate data from all internal and third-party applications without investing in expensive integration projects 2. Create both real-time and historical reports 3. Produce both reports and dashboards 4. Have a single system of record that generates reports in sync with their feeder systems 5. Slice, dice and present the data in any format 6. Design and generate new reports without requiring technical support 7. Easily create and change reporting formats 8. Schedule, produce and distribute reports to appropriate managers, whether or not they are registered users in the system 9. Allow various user groups to see different reports and/or data that are relevant to their specific function 10. Create rules to issue alerts when a specific metric or KPI falls out of compliance 11. Create a permissions-based environment that limits data access as needed Very importantly, the reporting tool needs to be easy for a business user to modify without requiring the assistance of an IT resource. Top Contact Center Key Performance Indicators In a recent worldwide benchmark study, DMG asked enterprise, contact center and IT leaders what key performance indicators (KPIs) they needed to manage their departments. Figure 1 shows the top 20 metrics used in contact centers DMG Consulting LLC

5 Figure 1: Top 20 Contact Center KPIs Source: DMG Consulting LLC, August 2011 The top KPIs used in contact centers are mainly productivity metrics. The top three KPIs include service level, abandoned call rate, and average speed of answer, as reported by 85.4%, 81.6% and 79.6% of study participants, respectively. Other key contact center performance indicators are agent average talk time (68.9%), number of calls/ s/chats handled (61.2%), and average wait time (60.2%). The remainder of the top ten KPIs, cited by 50% or more of respondents, includes number of calls/ /chats offered (59.2%), agent occupancy rate (57.3%), agent schedule adherence (54.4%), and agent average work or wrap time (53.4%). Contact center managers have to select the right KPIs to help them meet their departmental objectives and enterprise goals. The best course of action is to select an appropriate set of metrics to help the contact center and other enterprise departments manage corporate performance. Once the KPIs are identified, managers have to figure out the best way to obtain the required data from their systems and applications, and this is where a reporting or contact center performance management application is essential, as no single operating solution can provide all of the required data DMG Consulting LLC

6 Real-Time Contact Center Reporting There are two types of contact center performance management: historical and realtime. While there are substantive differences, they have complementary functions, and each provides actionable data that is relevant to different constituencies. Real-time performance management is a set of processes that empower line managers and supervisors to make ongoing tactical adjustments and improvements in real time to achieve departmental and enterprise goals. It is more tactical than classic CCPM because it enables contact center managers and supervisors to monitor and evaluate agent and team activity and performance as it is happening. This allows quick adjustments to be made, which can have an immediate impact on results. Typically, real-time reporting applications concentrate on KPIs where immediate intervention can alter the outcome. Some of these KPIs include: average speed of answer, schedule adherence, call volume, hold time, average talk time, occupancy rate, revenue per agent, sales conversion rate, dollars collected and dollars promised. See Figure 2. Figure 2: Real-Time Contact Center KPIs Source: DMG Consulting LLC, August 2011 Real-time CCPM addresses agent, team and contact center-level activities through dashboards and alerts, usually updated in intervals of fifteen seconds or less DMG Consulting LLC

7 The Benefits of a Good Reporting Tool The benefits of contact center performance management extend far beyond the scorecards and dashboards used to measure agent and system performance. Although the primary beneficiary of CCPM solutions is the contact center, other enterprise departments also realize benefits from these applications. See Figure 3. Figure 3: Primary Benefits of CCPM Solutions Source: DMG Consulting LLC, August 2011 Not surprisingly, the number-one reason why contact center managers want a reporting or CCPM solution is to automate the collection, production, distribution and analysis of contact center performance data. Another 73.8% of survey respondents indicate that a CCPM solution gives them enhanced contact center reporting. 68.9% of respondents believe that a top benefit of CCPM is its ability to deliver qualitative metrics for evaluating agent and department performance. 60.2% of survey respondents believe that a top CCPM benefit is its ability to help align contact center and enterprise goals; and 58.3% of respondents indicate that CCPM solutions are critical for delivering one version of the truth, which happens to be another way of saying improved reporting. All of these benefits make it clear that contact center managers need an advanced reporting or CCPM solution to provide essential data to help them manage their operation on an ongoing basis DMG Consulting LLC

8 Is CCPM Right for Your Department? Contact center managers worldwide want an enhanced reporting tool to give them data that is accurate, timely and consistent. They want a reporting or CCPM solution that collects and analyzes the data from multiple operating systems, and then produces and distributes the data on either a real-time or historical basis. The decision framework in Figure 4 can help you decide if a CCPM tool is right for your organization. Figure 4: CCPM Decision Framework YES NO 1. Do you need both real-time and historical reporting? 2. Do you need to consolidate data from multiple contact center and, possibly, enterprise applications? 3. Do you spend too much time trying to find key information? 4. Do you want your managers and agents to have access to real-time dashboards that they can modify? 5. Do you get conflicting data from different systems? 6. Do you need a standard set of KPIs to manage your department? 7. Do you need to be able to rapidly identify how well your department is adhering to its goals? 8. Do you need to be able to rapidly create ad hoc reports? 9. Do you need your IT group, vendor or consultant to make changes to your existing reports? 10. Are you dedicating too many resources to creating and distributing department reports? 11. Do you need to share different information with different teams/constituencies/executives? 12. Do you want managers to receive alerts when the department is out of compliance with its goals? 13. Do you want agents to have data to assess and manage their own performance? Source: DMG Consulting LLC, August DMG Consulting LLC

9 If you ve answered yes to 7 or more of these questions, then CCPM will help you manage and improve the performance of your operating environment. CCPM reporting tools provide objective criteria and data for measuring, reporting and evaluating the performance of a department, function, activity or agent. These solutions help contact center managers improve service quality and the overall customer experience, and help identify agent training needs; all three of these benefits, in turn, yield productivity savings and improve an enterprise s bottom line DMG Consulting LLC

10 About VPI VPI (Voice Print International, Inc.) is revolutionizing contact center performance and compliance management with real-time solutions for enterprises, contact centers, trading floors, government agencies and first responders. For more than a decade, VPI has been providing proven technology and superior service to more than 1,500 customers in 50 countries. VPI s award-winning VPI EMPOWER leverages advanced real-time analytics within every application module and an open, Web 2.0 architecture to help organizations more easily and rapidly identify and solve their critical business issues. VPI s approach has been disruptive to legacy approaches because its software is easy to deploy, easy to use, and extremely cost effective resulting in a significant return on investment. About VPI PERFORMANCE VPI PERFORMANCE contact center reporting software provides contact centers with the ability to capture data from multi-channel ACDs, Dialers and other data sources such as QA, CRM, WFM, service ticketing or your own in-house database. It can create unified interactive reports and personalized, realtime and historical views into the data and metrics and trigger alerts. VPI PERFORMANCE offers enterprise reporting across multiple sites and communications and telephony platforms, including the major IP and TDM ACDs and dialers. VPI has developed proprietary, pre-built data connectors to Avaya, Cisco, Aspect, Siemens and Nortel ACDs and dialers, and the major workforce management systems, to make implementation short and painless. For more information on VPI, call or visit About DMG Consulting DMG Consulting is the leading provider of contact center and analytics research, market analysis and consulting services. DMG s mission is to help end users build world-class, differentiated contact centers and assist vendors in developing high-value solutions for the market. DMG devotes more than 10,000 hours annually to researching various segments of the contact center market, including vendors, solutions, technologies, best practices, and the benefits and ROI for end users. DMG is an independent firm that provides information and consulting services to enterprise and contact center management, the financial and investment community, and vendors in the market. More information about DMG Consulting can be found at DMG Consulting LLC

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